THE ULTIMATE FLEX PLAY GUIDE FOR TFT
Hey guys, I'm Voids1n, longtime TFT competitor and coach. I hit top 10 a little while ago and am grinding for Rank 1 omegalul. I've been taking this set more seriously than previous sets, and I think one of my biggest strengths is flexing early, mid and even late game sometimes. In recent sets, active pivoting may have been a secondary or almost useless skill but I think it's actually very viable this set. Despite the bugs and the technical issues, I think this set is good in terms of trait design and potential creativity. It reminds me a little of pre set 6 sets, which is a bit of an unc take I know.
Video format for this guide: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k6fQwF25MDY
FLEX GUIDE:
EARLY GAME FLEXIBILITY:
- Early game flex is really important because you want to think of units as archetypes like AD caster, AD autoattacker, AP caster, Tank, AP/AD Fighter rather than concrete boards.
- You want to think of buffing your strongest carry and your strongest tank with synergies. (E.g. brawler for Rek’Sai, Rapidfire for Xayah, etc.).
- The types of units you hold depend on your components as well. For example, if I have a Sword, Belt, Cloak drop I am way more inclined to hold Akali + Camille than Veigar because I have a Sterak’s Gage slam. More importantly, because my items lean AD, I’m looking to make an early game AD board to make my gameplan more fluid.
- Always look for potential upgrades and don’t get complacent with your 2* 1 costs. A lot of times you can hold 2 or 3 cost units on the bench to replace your 2* 1 cost carries/tanks for Stage 3 and early Stage 4 once you upgrade them.
EXAMPLES OF ADAPTING YOUR EARLY/MID GAME:
- When brainstorming useful +1 units (for your next level), think about not only how to buff your strongest carry/tank, but useful synergies that either offer teamwide benefits (Brawler, Defender) or useful utility (Blossom, Riftbeast) as well.
- Strong individual units such as 4 costs and Rival units can also be considered
AP LINE:
Once Teemo is upgraded, we shift to making him our main carry and adding a +1 Invoker to buff him.
Generic Soraka Malphite. This is a potential standard level 8 endgame AP board that we've landed on.
Generic Ahri Invokers. This is another potential endgame AP board that we can play.
With our AP opener, we have the option to play into 2 example endgame boards. Of course there are others as well such as Zyra Jugg, Fast 9 AP, etc. If you’re really crazy you can flex the 4-2 rolldown for either comp, but oftentimes if you have Jeweled Gauntlet + Striker’s/Rabadon’s it’s better to just force Ahri. This applies double if you don’t have spell crit at all for the Soraka Malphite comp.
AD LINE:
Standard early game Ravager board
Flexing Around Emblems
- If homeless with a weak early game board/no direction, emblems are a great way to force a direction. Depending on the meta, certain emblems will be stronger than others.
- Oftentimes when you click augments like Trait Tree you won’t get multiple emblems that are useful in a particular comp, so you have to choose the one that applies most to a strong meta comp or enables a high cap comp.
- For example, if you have Rapidfire Emblem + Executioner Emblem, you either play: Aphelios 5 Rapidfire with the emblem on Brambleback or you play Executioner Malphite, but if you have primarily AD items with Xayah Elderwood opener you are heavily leaning into the 5 Rapidfire comp
- If you have AP items, you lean heavily into the Malphite Executioner comp
- I realize now that this actually may not be the best example of isolating valuable emblems as you can play Aphelios Elderwood as well with these Emblems, but you get my point :D.
EXAMPLES OF USING EMBLEMS THROUGHOUT THE GAME:
AD:
AP:
Notice how our items heavily affect the path in which we go under with our emblems.
Flex Around the Meta:
- Even though this set is way more flex than most if not all of the recent sets, it doesn’t mean you can just Frankenstein any board you want.
- You want to flex around the strong existing comps/units, not just what you think makes sense
- You can make a crazy board to play for placement, but you should not have it as your Plan A gameplan
Examples of Freaky Frankenstein Boards:
Something like this you would think would work based off intuition, but because AP Nidalee is not the best right now, this comp is something you would only play if you suddenly got dropped 3 Rods off Raptors, had a Rapidfire emblem and were playing for a 4th at best, not a comp you craft in your mind when 2-1 rolls around.
Here is another example of flex where things could go wrong. I think boards like these where you’re deviating from the established level 8 boards have to hit multiple 2* 4 costs immediately to be stable, but the bigger issue is if you’re low HP you are destined to die starting stage 5 when people start finalizing their boards and you’re stuck with a mish mash board.
I made this guide/video on the tail end of last patch so I actually don’t know if Mama Beak has motion this patch after buffs, but this is an example of “freak flexing” in which you have too many various carries scattered around the place, and if you’re in a spot to enable Kha’Zix for 3 traits, it’s better to just put the fries in the bag and play standard Kha Zix rather than do something crazy, ESPECIALLY with no emblems.
Yes, technically you can get Rapidfire, Executioner and Ravager on Kha’Zix, but you’re playing around suboptimal units when you can just either do regular Kha reroll or regular Azir reroll.
Flexing Level 9
- Fast 9 is more flexible than Fast 8 comps (without emblems) usually.
- A lot of lvl 9 units require only 1 or no synergies to be effective
- This allows for a lot of different carry combinations as long as your frontline is stable enough
This diagram seems confusing at first and it definitely is, but the intent is to put units together that can use similar items. The Tanks are adjacent to each other, the IE + Strikers users are next to each other, the AD autoattackers are next to each other, and so on.
This is meant to demonstrate holding certain units on your rolldown based on what items you have. TG could go on any secondary unit by the way.
With that in mind, you can make some unconventional level 9 boards!
This is an example of an unconventional board with unconventional Ashe items. Yes, you’re looking for Draven first with these items but if you hit Ashe pair with no Dravens, you’re heavily leaning into having her carry the attack speed items. 4 Juggernaut is a cheap frontline option that can stabilize you even into lategame, and Alune is the AP unit that we hit because we have hybrid damage items made.
This is something a little more wild. Say you were looking to play Alune/Lux but there are many copies gone/you’re lowrolling, but you hit a random Ivern 2*. Usually you don’t think to carry him with the Shojin/JG package, but he can do some work as well with these items. No one really thinks of Ivern + Dragon duo carry, but since these are the upgrades we hit with the items we have, we have to make do and adapt to what the game is giving us.
FINAL THOUGHTS:
I hope this guide was really helpful to those who are trying to become more of a competitive player, I’ve been putting in a decent amount of work to improve this set and am always open to helping out the community. If you want private coaching hit me up on discord: voids1n or join my discord to pay attention to when I do my free group coaching sessions!!
I realize that flexing reroll comps is missing in this guide as those comps have been generally MIA for the past few patches but maybe I’ll make a guide on that soon :D